DSfix increases the rendering resolution for better visual quality; without it the game outputs anamorphic 1024x720. It also allows the 30 FPS cap to be removed, HD or other alternate textures to be used, as well as giving options for anti-aliasing (AA), screen space ambient occlusion (SSAO), depth of field (DOF) blurring, anisotropic filtering (AF) and many other features.

Raising the FPS cap introduces minor clipping problems. It is, however, generally safe to play at 60 FPS, and you will be unlikely to encounter any issues. See High frame rate for more information.

The Dark Souls Input Customizer (DSIC) allows full customization of the controls of Dark Souls. It uses an intuitive input system that allows the rebinding of every action to arbitrary combinations of keys or buttons on the controller, mouse or keyboard. Although this can in part also be achieved with existing tools, DSIC is much more flexible and wraps it all up in an easy to use package, with additional functionality that is specially tailored to Dark Souls. DSIC also fully includes the Dark Souls Mouse Fix, which does not have to be installed separately.

By default DSCM should already connect you to DSCM-Net, improving multiplayer connectivity.

DSCM and Dark Souls do not need to be started in any specific order. You can run DSCM before starting Dark Souls, or you can run DSCM after the game is already open. DSCM will "just work" no matter when it is started.

Anti aliasing may be forced with the compatibility flag 0x004000C0. Sparse Grid Supersampling gives a blurry effect. Multisampling combined with transparency supersampling seems to work well (this author uses 4x on each). Some dark diagonal line artefacts are visible on my system occasionally with these settings but aren't obtrusive. DSfix's antialiasing should be turned off for this.

Set a resolution lower than your native display to improve performance on older machines, at the cost of up-scaled blurriness and aliasing.

Adjust settings in game[citation needed]

Disable motion blur.

Certain areas of the game are more demanding on your hardware causing slowdown in-game. It seems that the engine, when faced with an area where it struggles to render 30 FPS, will cut down to 15FPS. The most famous is Blighttown, but large animated characters can also produce this slowdown.

Unlock the FPS cap with DSfix (unlockFPS 1), set the frame cap at 30 (FPSlimit 30) and enable Vsync (enableVsync 1) For the most part you will have the same experience, but where the game would usually dip to 15FPS it will only drop as far as it needs to (results depend on your machine).

Option 1: Use borderlessFullscreen and set RefreshRate = 60 in DarkSouls.ini. This setting is ignored when Dark Souls is not in true fullscreen- your desktop refresh rate will not be changed and the game won't crash when accessing the settings.

Option 2: Make sure your monitor is set to 60Hz before attempting to access in-game PC Settings.

Other frequencies may be acceptable, but something like 58Hz is not, nor are 120Hz, 144Hz

The crash only happens when trying to access the in-game PC Settings; it is safe to use any frequency after you have finished adjusting in-game settings.

Option 3: Don't even try to access the in game PC Settings, just edit DarkSouls.ini by hand.

When creating your first character, the settings may automatically be accessed.